The World of Illustrator Markers

...in the craft realm.

Sidenote: I might have promised a post about the projects I completed over the weekend but for some reason I didn't complete the other Viva La Verve Challenges and the one I'm going to talk about in this post. But you might be interested in my journey with illustrator markers. Read on.

I've been dabbling in coloring with markers for my card images. I love all the Anya's and Milo's out there, but I needed to make it relavent to any projects I might have in my to-do box. I have a stack of photos that were so nicely sent to me of my mother's 75th birthday celebration at her church. I am suppose to make a scrapbook of her day. My sister and I sent two bouquets and a corsage that had beautiful blue delphinium flowers and I wanted to have that as the theme throughout the scrapbook.

So I started with my set of Chartpak markers from college. Most of them are dried out, yep that's how long I've been out of college. I ran across a B12 set of Copic markers at the LSS (Local Scrabooking and Stamp) store that were on sale. That set didn't have enough markers to blend with in the same family colors. So when I went to the art store for some major Elmer glue supplies (think Cold Porcelain Clay recipe) I ran across Prismacolor markers. List price they were about $4.20 and with a 40% coupon they were just right for testing. I bought 6 colors.


Blue Violet PM-42
Imperial Violet PM-127
Copenhagen Blue PM-40
Blender Pen PM-121
Light Olive Green PM-26
Dark Olive Green PM-28

It was quite an experience. I decided I would just play and learn how to use alcohol based markers. Of course these colors are meant to be used for the blue flowers in my mom's bouquets, so I penciled a flower on white cardstock and just went for it.

Okay so what do you think?

What did I learn from this playtime?
Use colors that are closer together in shade = so more markers need to be purchased.
The blender pen looks blotchy and almost like a bleaching effect on my cardstock.
Alcohol-based pens blend into eachother very well. A blender pen is not necessary except to take away a color.

I need to do some more searching on tutorials and find out what I might do better with the markers I have. I can't buy more markers until I'm certain I like doing this coloring method. I can easily do this type of coloring with wet watercolor so if it doesn't start getting easier its not for me.